electronics

I recently got a cool new development board by participating in a competition by India`s premier Electronics Magazine- EFY or Electronics For You. The board is a Renesas Rx-63N microcontroller based developement board that has been coloured quite interestingly. It has a ‘PINK’ solder mask. Thats quite rare color for the solder mask. The word ‘Sakura’ means Cherry Blossom which is probably pink in color and hence the justification of pinkish tone of the board.

GR Sakura Board Box

Delivered/Facilitated/Distributed by Element14

So Lets not waste any time and see what we have inside this tiny little package!

Opened! 🙂

The first thing you see is the getting started card with text in both English and Japanese. The box is about 2.8 X 2.4 inches and nicely done.

Here`s what the getting started slip has to say!

Plug and Play!

Hmm,Pretty straight forward! (will cover the entire process in the next post) It has been made by Wakamatsu Tsusho Co. Ltd and yeah.. Made in Japan! 😀

Here comes the angel!

We can see the pin map and the board has an Arduino form factor. Behind we have the SakuraBoard in a bluish bag, probably ESD Proof. Some pins are 5V tolerant and are indicated in white color.

Box Contents!

We have a USB host connector for our USB needs. It hasn`t been soldered as that would make the board uneven from the bottom and hence, difficult to pack!

Here`s what the USB connector bag has to say:

Now lets unwrap the blue bag and meet our new Sakura Board!

Ah! Beauty..

RX63N uC @96Mhz

The ammo on board is a 32bit RX63N 100-pin (R5F563NBDDFP) micro-controller running at 96Mhz. It has :

1 Mb Flash
128Kb RAM
Tons of communication interfaces like: USB (host/function), Ether-MAC, I2C, SPI, CAN, IEBus
16 bit and 8 bit Timers and a separate WDT
12/10 bit ADC with DMA(Direct memory Access) [what it means is that data can be fetched easily from the ADC]

This was what the massive guy has inside it.

Top View:DC Jack (5V only), USB for flashing, Ethernet for communication, LEDs,Regulator and Rx63N all in an arduino-like form factor

Another View!

Bottom View: SD Card for data storage,Un-populated XBee Connectors and tons of solder bridges to customize!

Bottom View:
SD Card for data storage,Un-populated XBee and USB Connectors and tons of solder bridges to customize!

This is probably the prettiest board i have seen.The pads,holes and vias are done very beautifully in ENIG to make them last long. There are mounting holes at same spots as Arduino Duemolive. The R5F563NBDDFP controller is in the LQFP form and probably machine soldered.

On board we have tons of features and the best part is that most of the board is Arduino Compatible not only in Hardware and well as software, this means you can use Arduino type IDE for Sakura Board too, better its web based ( will talk about it in the next post) and most of the arduino shields are compatible. Thats the WoW Factor!

Lets see what the board real estate looks like:

▶USB function pins (mini-B）: Download by USB mass storage (write)

//Means you can just compile code and drag and drop the .bin file into the device when it enumerates on the USB as a Mass Storage, Voila programming Done!

▶EtherNet (RJ45) pins : LAN such as Web server and remote download available

//On Board Ethernet connector and ability to work as a server and client ( #IoT guys will love it)
▶ USB host pins (A)： applicable to Android-ADB-ADK

//On Board USB host.. WoW.. You ‘might’ be able to connect you keyboard,mouse and other USB devices.
▶ MicroSD jacket: possible to share data with PC

//There is an MicroSD card which can be used to log data and can be used to run music files etc.
▶ XBee ready pins: mount XBee module for wireless remote download

//There are unsoldered XBee Pads to connect your own XBee.
▶4 User LEDs and 1 User Switch..

That`s equivalent to an Arduino+Ethernet shield+SD cardAdapter+XBee Adapter+USB Host Shield.

On the whole, Its a pretty nice board and has tons of features meant for a beginner and advance users.They are several domains where it can be used, be it data logging, SCADA Applications,Remote Monitoring, IoT,Music Playback,and lots and lots of projects. The possibilities are huge! 🙂

If you need more information about the board, you can see this.

Hope you like the unboxing post. If you want me to try anything on this or if u have any questions, feel free to comment. If you made a dev board/shield and want it to be un-boxed/reviewed you can contact me here as well.

Stay tuned to see what happens when we play around with the web IDE for the board.

Till then,

さようなら(Sayōnara)(Bye in Japanese)

IndianTinker

Sometimes we often face situations like lesser GPIO pins when working on “peripheral optimized” microcontrollers like MSP430 which offer a perfect balance of cost to feature ratio. The MSP430G2231 which comes with the older version of launchpad (v 1.4) has 8 I/O on Port1 and the datasheet also says that the crystal pins(XIN and XOUT) can be used as I/O with an interrupt capability but there was a lot of ambiguity on how to actually use these pins as I/O.

Even the user`s guide which is very lucid and clear on all peripherals does not mention the way to use it. After failed searches over the web for the correct way to use them..I started experimenting with the launchpad to find it out.

I figured out that by default the pins for the crystal are initialized in the ” Reserved ” mode as mentioned in the user guide:

Its just a simple job but it took me sometime to figure it out.. 😀
So, now all you need to do is clear the PxSEL2 bit and what you get in return is a generous gift of two extra I/O`s. This is “critically” useful while interfacing 7segs using standard multiplexing techniques .
The code is given here as follows:

/*
Using Crystal Pins as IO
Microcontroller: MSP430G2231
author: Rohit Gupta
Email:  rohit7gupta [at] gmail [dot] com
Date:   14/1/2013
Homepage:www.indiantinker.wordpress.com

Compiler: Code Composer Studio on Windows 7 64bit Machine
Copyright (C) <2013>  <Rohit Gupta>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/


#include<msp430g2231.h>
void delay_ms(unsigned int ms )
{
      unsigned int i;
      for (i = 0; i<= ms; i++)
        __delay_cycles(1000); //Built-in function that suspends the execution for 1000 cycles
}
void main(void)
{
	WDTCTL = WDTPW + WDTHOLD; //Stop the watchdog..bow..boww
	P2SEL&=~(1<<7); //Clear the SEL bit to enable use as a IO pin
    
	P2DIR|=(1<<7); //Output at pin2.7
        P2OUT&=~(1<<7); //Turn On LED on Pin 2.7
	while(1)
	{
		P2OUT|=(1<<7);
		delay_ms(500);
		P2OUT&=~(1<<7);
		delay_ms(500);
	}


	
}

They youtube video is being uploaded to see this in action.

So, Go ahead and grab those extra I/O`s being left unused :D.

Happy New Year 2013!

Cheers,
Indian Tinker

Indian Tinker

Indian Tinker

Unboxing Sunday: Renesas GR-Sakura Board

Tutorial: Using Crystal Pins as I/O on MSP430

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